Hot Coffee conversation with Annabel Keenan, New York-based art writer
Published Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Annabel Keenan is a distinguished and quite busy New York-based art writer whose insightful articles you would read in The New York Times, The Art Newspaper, The Brooklyn Rail, Financial Times, and other major publications. Running into Annabel at art events, I have always wanted to learn more about her path and writing practice. This month, her new book, Climate Action in the Art World: Towards a Greener Future, was published in the UK, and this was a perfect time to do a proper interview. Annabel gives advice to art writers starting now, talks about sustainability within the art industry, and gives a recommendation for a show to see.
Nina: Imagine you are in your favorite coffee or tea spot. Where is it? What are you drinking? What are the three things you see right now?
AK: I love that question. I feel like you can learn a lot about somebody by asking that. For me, it would be an espresso in Rome sitting on the Gianicolo Hill, which has this beautiful vantage point of the city. I see the Pantheon, the church towers, and the curve of the river below. If I could transport myself there, I would in a heartbeat.
Nina: You are among the hardest-working art writers in New York today. Please tell me how you started? Was this career something you had envisioned from the very beginning?
AK: Thank you! That’s really nice of you to say. I’ve always loved writing. In college, I started out as an English major, but when I went to Italy for a year, I essentially ran out of English classes, so I switched to Art History and Italian. In grad school at Bard, I was doing a lot of academic writing. When I finished my master’s degree in 2015, I moved to Los Angeles and was working in museums and galleries and writing for a small blog—maybe once every other month—just for fun. I was apprehensive about making writing a career because I didn't know if that would ruin it for me—having deadlines and the pressure, so I was writing very casually for four or five years. Then in 2020, right before the pandemic, I moved back to the East Coast—Connecticut for several months until things reopened and then to New York, where I’ve been since. COVID was a time when everyone reflected on their lives, and I decided to just try and see if I could do this as a full-time writer.
The first publication I pitched was The Art Newspaper. I got an assignment, and it was like a snowball, but I will say that the first year and a half of being a freelancer is a hustle. The rates publications pay are all over the place and some don’t pay writers at all. It's hard to get commissions in the beginning, and to really earn a sustainable income you need to have work lined up for weeks. It's a really difficult job to get into, but I can’t see myself doing anything else at this point.
Nina: Please tell us more about your book “Climate Action in the Art World: Towards a Greener Future” just published in UK.
AK: My specialty as a writer is contemporary art and environmental sustainability. This specialty came about quite naturally; these were two topics that I was always interested in growing up around art (my grandmother and aunt were both artists and my walls are filled with their work) and in a small rural town. During the pandemic in 2020, the art industry started to reflect on its environmental impact. Groups like Galleries Commit and Gallery Climate Coalition emerged and issued statements committing to sustainable operations. That was a really important moment. As a writer, I can only write what someone is willing to publish, and publishers are only going to commission what they think readers want to read. So in 2020, some publications realized they needed to start focusing on climate action and sustainability, which was when things really started to take off for me.
In my book, I was able to revisit some of the articles that I had written over the past five years and reach out to the people who I wrote about, get their updates, dive deeper into the topics, and fill in areas that I hadn't been able to cover in my regular writing. I also covered art and artists, such as Jordan Weber, whose public installation Detroit Remediation Forest (2024) features overlapping golden crowns with air quality signals where the jewels might be. These reveal the air levels based on nearby sensors, helping locals protect themselves and adovcate for cleaner air, which is a huge issue in Detroit. The piece also includes a new tree canopy that cleans the air, a great example of a powerful regenerative project. My book is almost like a snapshot of what my focus has been over the last five years, and a great way for me to think about what’s next.
Jordan Weber’s permanent installation New Forest, Ancient Thrones,2024 crowns the entryway to the Detroit Remediation Forest in East Canfield Art Park, East Canfield. Commissioned by Sidewalk Detroit and created in collaboration with Canfield Consortium. Photo by Noah Elliott Morrison.
Nina: If there is one central question that you ask or try to answer within this book, what is it? And where can it be purchased?
AK: The question that I'm trying to answer is, ‘what can we as art workers, artists, dealers, etc. do to be more sustainable?’ In my book, I try to provide as many useful, approachable tips as possible.
What I want to underscore is that in any role, you can start approaching sustainability by just asking questions. If you're a front desk worker, you can say, ‘Why are we printing thousands of copies of a press release or a checklist when we can just provide a QR code?’ If you are an art handler, you can ask, ‘Why are we throwing away packing material? Is there a way we can store and reuse it?’ The answers to these questions might be no. Sometimes questions might show that what we're doing is sustainable. Sometimes they reveal what isn’t working. Ultimately, reflecting on operations is not just learning what's bad with the industry.
Because the book was published in the UK by Lund Humphries and Sotheby's Institute of Art, it's available in the UK now through this website. And in September, it will be distributed in the US, so you can pre-order through your local bookstores or online retailers here. Or you can buy the ebook now.
Jordan Weber’s permanent installation, New Forest, Ancient Thrones,2024, crowns the entryway to the Detroit Remediation Forest in East Canfield Art Park, East Canfield. Commissioned by Sidewalk Detroit and created in collaboration with Canfield Consortium. Photo by Noah Elliott Morrison.
Nina: What would be your advice to an art writer starting today?
AK: If you’re just starting out, you have to get a few bylines under your belt that demonstrate your skills as a writer. You can use these to pitch new places and build your name. I haven’t met a single editor who doesn’t value the work of freelancers, but editors need to trust that the freelancer will deliver the work on time and file copy that is clean. And, of course, they have to trust that the writer is ethical, which might sound obvious, but there are writers who will ask for fees from the subjects they’re writing about, among other questionable practices. So the first step to get into writing is pitch your ideas around to get a few bylines and use those to demonstrate the quality of your work. And if an editor wants to vet you, they can reach out to other editors or writers. We’re in a small industry and reputation goes a long way. In the beginning, to get those first bylines, you might have to approach blogs that don’t pay very much, but the more you get your foot in the door, the more opportunities will come.
Also, you have to be really organized. Keep track of your deadlines, pitch ideas today to guarantee work for tomorrow. I'm at the point where I’m usually working on up to 12 stories at once. This might sound like a lot, but the deadlines vary; sometimes they're in five days, sometimes they're in five weeks. It takes time to learn these nuances of each publication’s schedule.
Tracy Emin, I Saw you looking at me, 2024, acrylic on paper, courtesy of the artist, Tracey Emin Archive.
Nina: How do you choose the topics for your articles, as you write profiles as well as reviews of the exhibitions?
AK: I typically gravitate towards topics that relate to my interest in sustainability, whether that’s for a news story, review, or profile. I can’t just write reviews—they take a lot more mental capacity for me and it can be exhausting. I also like writing about art that challenges me, which can be for many reasons. I might not understand the work, or I might not have thought of the topic in the perspective the artist is presenting. I love diving into artwork like that because I’m going to learn something about myself in the process. I also have found that some of my favorite artworks today are pieces that I initially didn’t like. Recently, I reviewed Tracey Emin for The Brooklyn Rail. I didn't like Tracey Emin’s work for years, but I saw the current show of her paintings at the Yale Center for British Art and it completely changed my perspective of her without the distraction of her infamous installations and YBA identity.
Nina: Who is the writer you are reading now?
AK: My book pile is like a living thing because it's constantly changing, but I will name a few. There is a climate writer named Jeff Goodell whose books I love and I’m currently reading The Heat Will Kill You First. He puts into perspective big environmental concepts in ways that are impactful. I'm also currently reading The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina. It's a really fascinating book about extralegal and illegal things that happen in the ocean. This can be something terrible, like illegal fishing and what it does to the planet, or it can be how people use international waters to do things outside of the law, like provide abortions in international waters for people in areas where this is illegal.
Caroline Landau, Archiving Ice Svalbard #2, 2021, Blown glass, glacier water, sheet glass, and hxtal. Image courtesy of Trotter & Sholer
Nina: Do you have recommendations for a show currently on view in New York?
AK: I’d recommend Caroline Landau’s current solo show Archiving Ice: Notes on the Ephemeral at Trotter&Sholer in the Lower East Side. The show is on view through July 5 and it features these stunning glass sculptures made from molds of melting ice in areas like Newfoundland and California. Landau draws attention to the fragility and beauty of the natural world by underscoring how rapidly glaciers are melting because of our own activities. The show is in partnership with Kiehl’s to celebrate the brand’s sustainability initiatives and to coincide with World Refill Day, which I love because it’s a rare example of a brand partnership with purpose.
Image credit: portrait of Annabel Keenan by Sarah Wagner Miller.